The National Association of Broadcasters has announced that Ira Goldstone, technology coordinator for the Tribune Company and vice president/chief technology officer for Tribune Broadcasting Company, is the winner of this year’s Television Engineering Achievement Award.

The NAB is honoring Ira Goldstone with the Television Engineering Achievement Award at this year's convention in Las Vegas, NV.

Goldstone pioneered the use of electronic newsroom technology including digital editing, content storage and retrieval. He was an early adopter of digital electronic newsgathering (ENG) technology, including one of the first COFDM-equipped helicopters in the country.

Established in 1959, the award is given to industry leaders who have advanced broadcast engineering. Goldstone will be honored at the Technology Luncheon at the NAB convention April 21 in Las Vegas, NV.

Broadcast Engineering recently spoke with Goldstone about the future of news technology and the repurposing of content and newsgathering resources between the print and broadcast sides of Tribune.

Broadcast Engineering: What is your goal for television news technology given the rapid pace of change?

Ira Goldstone: We are always pushing towards multi-purposing and repurposing the news content we acquire. For instance, we are looking at ways to use high-definition cameras to grab stills for the newspaper work as well as gather video for our broadcast news.

Broadcast Engineering: Do you think video is to the point where it will be acceptable from a resolution point of video for the print side of your operations?

IG: Is 2 Mega Pixel adequate for newspaper use? Do we need to add a separate imager to the ENG camera to capture 4 Mega-Pixel images for the newspaper? Those are the issues we are grappling with. But that’s the direction we’re headed in.

Broadcast Engineering: Do you foresee Tribune’s print journalists going into the field and gathering news footage as well?

IG: No, we see print photographers going out with high-resolution cameras that can do both (still and video) and putting it into a sync cradle that the broadcast division has access to. Then the broadcaster can decide what to use.

Broadcast Engineering: How tolerant are print journalists to this repurposing which changes to some degree the way they’ve always done things?

IG: We have to be able to adapt to their workflow. We have to be able to ride along their workflow for free.

Broadcast Engineering: In what other areas can the broadcast operations benefit from the company’s print resources?

IG: On the TV side, we are databasing our graphics and allowing TV producers to create over the shoulder from database graphics. The publishing side has its own photo archiving system, and we are looking at interfacing with that too.

With the right rights and permissions, that will make a great resource to use on our TV side.

Broadcast Engineering: Being recognized by the NAB with this year’s Television Engineering Achievement Award must be quite an honor. What motivates you about this business?

IG: It’s the challenges of the evolution to digital and the fragmentation of the market. It’s the challenge of the economics of our business, to do more with less and creating new revenue streams. It’s the challenge of getting that accomplished, using what we have today to get where we need to be tomorrow.